


Roads Not Taken

by AVegetarianCannibal



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Car Accidents, M/M, Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 00:59:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13089120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVegetarianCannibal/pseuds/AVegetarianCannibal
Summary: An accident leads Hannibal to question the path he's taken with Will.





	Roads Not Taken

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place some time after "Coquilles" in the first season, but before "Fromage" would have happened.

Hannibal saw many roads lying before him, and felt a hint of yet others not quite visible to him in their entirety. He knew intuitively they were there, though, and he knew they all led to Will Graham in one form or another.

He had his preferred paths, of course. Will possessed so much potential—more than any patient who’d sat across from him before. He could be broken and put back together as he was meant to be, like pottery that was all the more beautiful for having been shattered and pieced together with seams of molten gold. Except Will, no tea cup despite Hannibal’s own similes and metaphors, would be broken as a man and the gold that held him strong was the sublime beast within, welling up from truest core of him. All Hannibal had to do was be there at the right times, encourage him to break so he could heal. Eventually, Will would look up at him and see him, and see what he’d done, and he would know why. He would understand why Hannibal had let his fevers rage.

 _Eventually_.

Then Jack Crawford called him and said something that threw every map, every atlas of possibility into a conflagration.

“Will Graham was in an accident driving home tonight. I’m headed to the hospital, but at this point I don’t even know if he’s alive.”

The roads all vanished like mirages upon approach.

As Hannibal drove, he couldn’t make his heart calm its frantic beating. His body, previously always under his control, seemed like an animal thing. Apart from him. Wild and base. He was panicking. He didn’t enjoy it.

At the hospital, Jack met him in the ER waiting room. His expression was grim and he looked tired.

“Is he–?” Hannibal couldn’t bring himself to ask. _Is he dead? Is Will dead?_

“He’s just out of surgery,” Jack said. “Femur is broken, pelvis fractured… couple broken ribs. Plastic surgeon’s coming in for his face, but let the ER doc know if you have any recommendations.”

It was all Hannibal could do to stop himself snapping at Jack. He wanted to see Will. He needed to set his gaze on him. Everything else was noise.

He made himself sound like the human he didn’t feel himself to be. “You said he was driving home when it happened?”

Jack’s expression grew even more grim. “That’s what I thought from what they told me over the phone,” he said. “Talked to the EMTs who brought him in, though, and they said he’d apparently driven into a ditch at low speed…then got out and wandered down the middle of the road.”

Hannibal recalled the conversation regarding sleepwalking he’d had with Will just days earlier. He said nothing.

“Another car came around the corner and just…” Jack shook his head. “He’s lucky he wasn’t killed on impact.”

“We’re the lucky ones,” Hannibal said.

“Yes,” Jack agreed. “We are.”

***

He waited at Will’s bedside, bent into a chair he barely felt, simply content to be there with him. It would have been untoward to hold his hand, and he had to fight the animal thing inside him that demanded he gather Will up and take him away.

Hannibal had gone to Wolf Trap while the plastic surgeon stitched up Will’s forehead. He fed the dogs and let them out, and explained their master would be home soon. Then he studiously removed all the breadcrumbs he had dropped there on an earlier visit, when he thought he might want others to find their way to that particular road.

When Will finally woke, Hannibal allowed himself a momentary squeeze of his hand before withdrawing again.

“My dogs,” Will said, his voice a dry croak.

“Taken care of,” Hannibal said. “You need not worry about any of that. I’ll help you with them as long as you need.”

Will tried to look down at himself, but the slightest effort seemed to exhaust him. “H-how bad?”

Hannibal rattled off the list of injuries. There would be weeks of healing and most likely months of physical therapy.

“You’ve had a CT scan of course,” Hannibal said, “but I’m asking— _demanding_ —your doctor order an MRI.”

“Brain injury?” Will asked.

“I’m… I’m certain you have anti-NMDA encephalitis,” Hannibal said, barricading that particular road. “I smelled the fever on you earlier, but I’m positive now. It would explain your headaches and sudden sleepwalking.”

Will blinked and seemed to process that for a long while. Then he let out a gasp. “The driver—the one who hit me… are they okay? Jesus, they must have freaked the hell out to see me in the middle of the road like that, much less hit me.”

Hannibal smiled at him. “Empathetic even now,” he said. “I haven’t inquired, but I’ll ask Jack and let you know what I find. I want you to rest now.”

As Hannibal stood to go, Will reached up and caught his hand.

“You’re a good doctor,” he said. “And a good friend.”

Hannibal’s heart thudded at a frantic pace again. He had no control over it, try as he might. “Not as good as you think,” he said, looking away. “But perhaps someday.”

For the first time since he’d met Will, Hannibal did not see many roads stretching out into the future. Not a single one was apparent to him. There was only a small patch of ground before him, beyond which was an unfamiliar darkness.

He took a step.

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt fill for Caligularib on Tumblr: "Will’s encephalitis causes him some kind of serious harm, like he has a seizure while driving or something, and it’s a wake up call to Hannibal that he doesn’t actually want will’s brain to actually burn to cinders"


End file.
